Month: June 2012

When I was in grade 4 I was ambitious craft-wise. Herm. I should modify that statement. I have always been very ambitious crafty-wisey. So when I was however old one is in 4th grade, 10-ish I guess, I made some toys. And surprisingly they have lived to tell the tale and play another day!

I stitched this little felt ball, about the size of a generous hacky-sac. Soft and well balanced for throwing at the head of a little brother without dire repercussions! Check out the well-spaced blanket stitching. Pretty good for little pioneer-aspiring hands.

I was in Waldorf and I seem to remember making all of these toys at school. So there’s a good chance the one above involved a lesson on fractions! In fact I remembered these toys when I found a felt ball from the same era made of a bunch of pentagons (like a soccer ball) with little flowers stitched onto each piece. Now I can’t find that ball, go figure. But it reminded me to dig these out of the toy box for a way-retro Rearview Friday post.

This one I crocheted back when I knew how to crochet. Yes, my 10-year-old Waldorf-self had a wider palette of crafty skills than I do now. I think it was referred to as the Brain Ball for obvious reasons.

Then there were the animals. Next up is mister floppy-ear bunny. The detail makes me shake my head, I was fussy. The stitching is tiny, he has a proper pom-pom tail. The rabbit is even weighted with seeds or rice for heaven’s sake. And of course the fibres are all-natural, it was Waldorf after all! I do still loooove me some natural fibres …

I have 3 significantly younger siblings and all the toys in this post made it through their play years and are now being enjoyed by my own boys over 20 years later. It just amazes me to think that I made toys that would be in the hands of my own wee people when I was still a girl.

I had to save the best for last. Check out this donkey! His legs even have shaped joints. His embroidery floss mane has seen better days but what do you expect after almost 25 years?! I was a goody-two-shoes in grade 4, actually for a lot of grade school til I got over myself circa high school, but I think I partly made a donkey so I could say “ass” legitimately but titter behind my serious-face. Ass.

I love that the act of making something leaves a memory in your muscles. I hold these toys and truly remember making them. Cheers to crafting at any age. Cheers to crafts that last.

I have been thinking about home a lot lately, perhaps because I am on the cusp of a big driving trip across the country to Alberta where I grew up. So I feel certain that June’s 2012 Quilting Challenge square should be a house! I love that Mr. Owl looks like he’s perched on the roof top.

I have many places I call home. Alberta of big sky and my first 20 years is home. City: Edmonton, neighbourhood: Parkallen. Friends and family, school and lessons, choir and dancing, adventures on foot, bike, bus and car, flights of imagination in the backyard. It’s more the memories that are home because by now a lot of the people have moved and the landscape has changed a fair bit. It’s the capital “H” home of my mind and heart.

Toronto is my adult home, In fact I’ve been here for 14 years as of this week — maybe that’s why home is on my mind! I came for dance school and fell in love with the city. And with a boy, who I married. I discovered how strong and able and independent and brave I am in this big city. And to my continued surprise, I rarely manage a streetcar ride without seeing someone I know. it’s become the lowercase “h” home, but no less important in my list of homes.

Now Toronto’s Cabbagetown is home-home. A house-of-dreams (yes, you are correct, that’s an obscure Anne of Green Gables reference) and its century-home maintenance realities is the literal roof-over-the-head-home. Now I am maker and keeper of the first home my boys will remember, with their own set of smells and colours and sounds and favourite corners. Their own intangible roots are stretching from this very house and city into the world.

And Adam, that boy I fell in love with, he and our 2 boys are HOME. All caps. Full stop. They are my chosen home, my heart and my landing place, my still point.

My friend Shannon Litzenberger, a prairie girl from the prairiest of all provinces (Saskatchewan of course!) and a powerhouse artist, arts advocate and policy junkie, is currently developing a dance project called HOMEbody. It’s a multi-faceted artistic musing on what home is, literally and figuratively. Definitely worth checking out!

I made this pair of folk-arty pysanky for my mom about 17 years ago. And she still has them! They dried, they didn’t rot, amazing. I was super-duper into folky-hippie-arty suns and moons at the time as you can see! I couldn’t believe it when I saw them at her house a couple of months ago. But I should back up and tell you how I learned this Ukrainian art form in the first place …

When I was almost too old to for summer camp I went to a day camp that blew my mind. We got to be pioneers for 5 whole days at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village! I did it for 2 or 3 years I think, and then I worked as a volunteer ’cause I was too old to be a camper but I really wanted to be a pioneer at least once per summer still. And then I worked as a leader of the program, because I could not get enough of being a pioneer! I still love a good historic site, but the UCHV has never been topped for me. If you’re ever in the Edmonton area, you must go, it’s an unforgettable experience. You will be forever moved by the tenacity of the settlers of Western Canada and the richness of the culture that the Ukrainians carried with them over the brutal miles of untamed Canada.

Here I am at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village on the old ferry, circa 1996. Can you think of a more beautiful place to work and be? The town site is in the background.

Honestly, those were some of the best days of my life. Both campers and program leaders (along with the interperters there) dressed in historically accurate clothing. For the ladies that meant brown cotton stockings held up with penny garters, cotton bloomers and slips and drop-waisted cotton print dresses. And to top it off, hustkas, the colourful, flowered woollen headscarves.

We became members of the families in the farm and town sites, we ground grain, “shopped” at the old store, fed animals, made meals from scratch, fetched water, rode in wagons and old cars, smithed tiny horseshoes, weighed grain at the elevator, dipped candles, packed ice in the ice chest, pumped gas at the hand pump, sent out Morse code messages at the train station, went to school and church (there are 3 varieties on the historic site there!) Can you think of a better way to spend a summer? I cannot. It was the best summer job ever.

And each week we made Pysanky, Ukrainian Easter eggs. Witness Susan in heaven. Beeswax melting, pots of dye waiting, delicate eggs ready for art. We worked from traditional Ukrainian patterns, though none of mine have survived. I did get my own kystka (if you scroll down in the link you’ll see beautiful eggs and then some lovely hands working with a kystka), the tool for drawing with heated beeswax on the eggs.

Each pysanka is made with a process exactly like batik. A layer of beeswax is drawn on the egg to seal in the white of the original surface, then the egg is dyed the lightest colour you want (traditionally yellow). Next a layer of wax designs over the yellow seal it in, then it’s dyed orange, draw, dye red, draw and so on through to black (or whatever your darkest colour will be). Then all the wax is heated and wiped away and a colourful egg appears, its magic, alchemy really! For these eggs I evidently drew the entire piece on the white egg and then layered the dye colours.

And lastly, you really should check out the Giant Pysanka in Vegreville, Alberta. Happy weekend!

This morning I got up early to make a quick gift for a wee girl. It’s a soothy/pacifier/nuk-nuk/chooch/you-name-it holder, a key piece if you use these things so they don’t get lost or dirty. And it might as well be charming!

I’ve been trying this lately, the up-early-to-get-some-work-done bit that is, and sometimes it works with my sleeper-iner boys! The time is finite and my ears tense for waking sounds, but so far I’ve some fair success, as long as I don’t plan too big a task.

I tend towards the Night Owl side of things, always have. I revel in a quiet, still house and come alive creatively after 11 o’clock pm, loving the possibility in the hours that lie ahead and not being interrupted (except perhaps to nurse). But the danger is that I’ll easily work almost all night and that’s not great when those hours are meant for sleeping. And it isn’t particularly compatible with present, conscious mothering, so I’m trying to choose sleep when there’s sleep for the taking and not to get seduced by long stretches of quiet, velvety, night hours I could use to sew and sew and write and think!

One of the things I miss most from my before-kids days are the long chunks of undivided, dedicated time I could carve out for projects. I definitely couldn’t appreciate what a freedom that was. Sometimes, nay, often, keeping so many balls in the air is not the most effective or satisfying way to get things done. But I’d rather be juggling in order to still be creative and creating alongside my lovely boys than not. And I wouldn’t trade them, don’t mistake this for a complaint. Rather, their presence in my life has taught me to use my time way more efficiently. And to value quiet night hours like gold.

But I am an Owl in Robin’s clothing. The early worm tastes okay, it’ll definitely do. But there’s no doubt I’ll still succumb to the night now and then … hoot hoot!

I’m loving this easy soother strap design I’ve settled on and recently picked up some great ribbon so I can make a bunch for Etsy. Cute, non?

I haven’t posted a Rearview Friday for, whoa, five weeks now! Oh dear. Well, there have been all sort of adventures and emergent situations and I decided it’d be okay to give ’em a rest for a while, just didn’t mean for it to be so many weeks. And I miss my Rearview Fridays! So without further ado, I offer up a project from 2006 that I made with my oft-collaborator Lindsay Zier-Vogel.

It’s a book called “Clothesline.” Lindsay proposed the idea to me, a wordless art book that she’d bind and I’d make little clothes for. Little? I love little! Making my own clothes? Correct. I love that too. I said yes.

I remember having a lot of fun sewing the tiny slip skirts, pants, shirts and dresses. figuring out the scale for the frames, deciding on colour and fussing with the tiny seams. And they all work — tie or clip or snap. Because that is how I roll.

The book looks charming on a shelf, zig-zagging along. I have to find a place for mine (hmmm, maybe the mantle …) Clothesline is bound accordion-style with ribbon seams and each page is a paper-clad frame for the clothing pieces.

Clothesline was displayed at Toronto’s Type Books in its basement gallery during one of Lindsay’s installations of her hand-bound book creations.

There are only three copies of Clothesline in existence! Though I discovered one more set of tiny clothes while cleaning out an old fabric box a few days ago (I must have made four sets), which is what inspired me to dig this beauty out to share here. So if anyone wants to commission one, and Zier-Vogel is in the mood to bind one more …

A love letter “posted” in a bike basket full of flowers. All photos in this post by Lindsay Zier-Vogel, the Love Letterer herself!

I haven’t written specifically about the kids or the mothering in a while. We are truckin’ along and I am riding the ever shifting balance of being home with two energetic, gorgeous boys. Gene is now 9-months-old and he is suddenly Captain Velcro, meaning he’s stuck to me like glue every waking moment. He’s utterly content if he’s on me, but the minute I try to leave — and by leave, I mean to go, say, get the mail or make some lunch, something innocent and necessary like that — he’s panicing, weeping, wailing piercingly, heartrendingly. He falls asleep clutching a handful of my breast in case the food source should try and sneak off whilst he’s at rest! He’s realized in earnest that I can disappear and that he doesn’t know when I’ll be back. And this consciousness has led to paranoia on a grand scale! Of course it’s normal and good and I’m so glad to see him evolve, even if sometimes I find myself trying to go pee with an infant stuck to me, which is no easy feat. I surrender a lot these days and just lie on the floor or in bed and let him satellite around me, maybe fold laundry or read but often just be there (at the cost of cleanliness or order in the house, but this too shall pass!) We have lots of giggles and gazing sessions together and he continues to charm me silly.

Then there’s Rudi, now 4 years old. He’s suddenly so grown up! He’s still got his powerful willWill WILL intact but I am finding that the near constant butting of heads that we’ve been playing at for the past few months is easing up. He is more independent than ever, he makes his own toast now and is so proud to “make breakfast!” He is a little more logical, a little more worldly. He can wait when I ask him too, knowing that it won’t be interminable. And we are starting to have little moments of, for lack of a better way to put it, hanging out. As mom and son rather than mom and toddler. I take him out once in a while without Gene because even though I’m with both boys all day, my attention is divided and Gene usually gets more of me. So I jumped at the opportunity to take Rudi to go Love Lettering last week with my friend, the indomitable artist Lindsay Zier-Vogel.

Choosing his Love Lettering materials carefully.

The Love Lettering Project is a community arts project bringing love letters to strangers. Lindsay’s been at it for eight years now and gained all sorts of local and national attention last year. The project grows by leaps and bounds each year and I “love” it (a-ha-ha). This year, she’s setting up at various community events, inviting people to write a love letter to something they love about their city and then leave it anonymously for someone to find — which will surly brighten the days of all involved! Rudi and I went to The Avro in Toronto’s East end for PAL-SAC‘s (Post A Letter Social Activity Club) night hosting The Love Lettering Project. We chatted, he had water in a pint glass, worked diligently on a love letter to The Secret Park (which is near our house, but I can’t say where exactly, what with it being Secret and all) and chatted up the locals. Then we went for burnt-marshmallow ice cream at Ed’s. It was a good night!

Working oh-so carefully on his Love Letter to The Secret Park in Toronto. I love the white finger tips on his left hand!

I loved being able to chat with Rudi without the divided attention necessary when I’m solo with the two boys. We are so much calmer together when we’re alone together. I think there’s a lesson in there for me somewhere! I’m sure it has a lot to do with my tension level. I am constantly amazed by what mirrors we are as parents. Rudi so often reflects how I am, and he’s got keen senses, because I can’t be faking calm, he’ll still pick up on the turmoil underneath if it’s there. So cheers to one-on-one dates with 4-year-olds, with sons, and cheers to love letters. And to velcro, can’t forget the velcro …

My regular dance collaborator and dear friend Brittany Duggan invited me to join her in creating two tents for The Encampment by Thomas and Guinevere. I probably didn’t need one more thing to be involved in but oh, this has been so inspiring and intoxicating. And I have to share what we’ve come up with!

The Encampment (Toronto Version 2012) has been commissioned by City of Toronto for the War of 1812 Commemoration and Luminato, Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity. It’s an art installation that will stand on the grounds of Toronto’s Fort York National Historic Site during Luminato from June 8-17. The Encampment will stay up at Fort York until June 24.

For The Encampment, 200 tents are being pitched to reflect the bicentennial of the War of 1812. Inside each one is an artistic interpretation of someone who lived and breathed during that period. It’s fascinating to walk around and see the care, curiosity and creativity rendered by the collaborating artists.

Our Anne Powell tent.

Brittany signed up to participate in The Encampment a while ago and has done an enormous amount of research on our two historic figures. That’s when she invited me to come along, brainstorm and create — um, that’s my favourite!

The historic people Brittany chose for us to interpret in our tents are:

The Toronto Public Library’s Digital Archive has a beautiful drawing by William Dummer Powell showing proposed buildings at Caer Howell (the family house) from the 1830s. It’s location is listed “n. of Queen St. W., w. of University Ave.” If you know that area of Toronto try to stop and imagine it as bucolic as this, I am amazed at how different things looked 200 years ago! the image is in the public domain so I’ll include it here along with the link above, courtesy of the TPL: